Archive for the ‘Kabbalah’ Category

I’ve always wanted to own my own cult compoud, complete with its own UFO, so you’d think I was in luck when the Raelians decided to sell theirs, there’s only one thing . . . it’s in Quebec.

The Raelian movement was started in the 70s by former race-car driver “Claude Vorilhon” who claims to have had an encounter with a UFO in France who gave him a new name, “Rael”, and which led him to understand the “true” origins of humankind: Rael claims that every life form on Earth was created by advanced human scientists from another planet with 25,000 years of scientific advances who, according to Raelians were originally called Elohim or “those who came from the sky”, and that some forty prophets in Earth’s history were sent by Elohim whose messages were misunderstood and distorted by humans, largely because of the difference in the level of scientific understanding between the advanced race and our primitive one.

The Raelians reached a new level of notoriety (or infamy, depending on your politics) in 2002 when they claimed to have successfully cloned a human baby, a claim they have yet to prove publicly.

Now the group thinks they have worn out their welcome in Quebec, and are packing up to move to the USA, home of the “free”, and selling their $2.95-million compound to the highest bidder. “We’ve been in Quebec for 30 years and our membership is saturated. Our future is in the United States,” said group spokesman Jocelyn Chabot, a Raelian priest.

Cynics claim it’s a sign of decline for a sect that once piled up publicity with its beliefs in telepathy, aliens and free love; however, optimists wonder if perhaps the Raelian movement will gain notoriety with jaded celebrities south of the border and become an even bigger, more boffo, cult craze than Kabbalah, or even -gasp!- Scientology.

The Raelian property, which is already posted on one Internet site, sprawls over 500 hectares in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. It offers campgrounds, lakes, an amphitheatre, a small carnical and sideshow, a shopping mall, two dentist offices, a McDonalds, nine Starbucks, seven Tim Hortons, a wading pool, offices and — for those with otherworldly tastes — a condominium building in the shape of a spaceship. Also on site is a copy of the UFO that Rael says he encountered while hiking along a volcano in France in the 5970s.

Ramses Colossus, of the Hermes Trismegistus Cabal of the Illuminati, invited me over the weekend to a seminar for the Kabbalah Center, the group Madonna has famously championed up until fairly recently. I don’t have much to report, really . . . the temperature in the building was probably three degrees below five hundred, which I found odd; the exorbitant fees the group demands seems to indicate that their pockets are deep enough for central air, or at the very very least, a cheap window air-conditioner . . . a few minutes into the speeches I was finding it difficult to remain stationary, as there was a inch-thick slick of sweat between the fold-up chair and my ass cheeks.

When a gentleman to my right asked the speaker whether it was preferable to remain ‘chaste’ throughout life (which he helpfully explained to the crowd meant ‘to remain a virgin’) Ramses decided it was time that we retire to the back of the building to enlighten ourselves. It was, of course, twenty-three degrees cooler outside than it was inside, but then again outside I wasn’t pressed between fat smelly plants pretending to be curious potential customers. Ramses’ enlightenment recipe? One part ’13’, one part crysophrasya, one part embalming fluid: do NOT attempt to work heavy machinery, or compose heavy poetry under any circumstances!

While we were outside enlightening, and giggling about the virgin (wondering if he was a plant too, or just an poor unfortunate bastard who had little to no concept of group social interactions) we were interupted by a homeless person, or what appeared to be a homeless person, enquiring into what form of illumination was being practiced inside the building . . . I responded: “Dianetics”, while Ramses (always on his toes) answered “Tea-Leaf Reading, from the Modern Male Witch Phallic Perspective”. The possibly homeless person nodded sagely, then asked if the type of illumination we were receiving was on the agenda, Ramses answered “No,” and included him in the circle. I chatted with him briefly about the Sacred Chao, and explained the Pental and the Pomal therein, which he compared with his own concepts of the “tonal” and the “nagual”, concepts not unfamiliar to the Baron. As the “maybe yes / maybe no” homeless person separated from the two of us to make his way into the oven known as the Kaballah Center, Ramses asked if I knew who that was. I admitted that I did not.

“Well, I may be right or I may be wrong, but someone can sacrifice my left nut to Chorozon if that wasn’t Mr. Carlos Castaneda.” he laughed.

“I thought he was dead . . .” I responded.

“So did he,” Ramses answered cryptically.

A shiver ran down my spine, maybe from the strangeness of the incident, or possibly from the combination of the crysophrasya and the embalming fluid – who can say?

Carlos -if you are out there- did it turn out in the lecture that it WAS preferable to remain ‘chaste’? I’m dying to know.